


Misery Acquaints

by PepperCat



Series: Velvet Detonation [3]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Conversations, Desperation, Gen, Hartley remaining calm under pressure, Knives, Negotiations, Unlikely alliances, implicit threats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 04:47:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14012502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PepperCat/pseuds/PepperCat
Summary: If you need help dealing with a meta in Central, there is really only one sensible option. Axel goes looking for Captain Cold.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: the first chapter of this is a rewrite of the first scene I ever wrote with Hartley and Axel, which was on my Tumblr back in [July of 2016](https://peppersandcats.tumblr.com/post/147879550203/for-love-popcorn-and-c4). So yes, the idea of Hartley and Axel interacting when Axel doesn't have James Jesse around has been in my head for a _long_ time.
> 
> I am not entirely sure about how smoothly this is written, but I cannot comfortably keep relaying the truism that "the perfect is the enemy of the good" and not actually try to live up to it.

The man had a grin like a rat trap, no sense of personal space, and a knife. Hartley barely had time to be angry at himself for not paying attention (none of the excuses--tired, late, expectation of solitude--mattered) before he was backing away in pure reflex, catching himself just before he fetched up against the dusty storefront on the street that wouldn't be _nearly_ so dark if they fixed the broken streetlights.

The man stopped a few inches shy of walking right into him, leaned forward and grinned down and the height difference was not _that_ much, certainly nothing like talking to Mick, and he was saying something but Hartley’s field of vision was full of a blade that looked silky-sharp even in the shadows and teeth and spikes and dark blue and orange-that-looked-maroon and polka dots and checks and it wasn't that he couldn't _hear_ it was just--

He took a measured breath in and when he exhaled the words came out cool and steady.

"I'm sorry," dryly, "but not even _I_ can hear you over the blade and that outfit. Ditch one of them and we'll talk."

There was a pause--long enough to double-check calculations on which way of dodging held the best odds, long enough to breathe in, out, in--and then the man's grin widened and his knife hand snapped forward, went over Hartley's left shoulder and made a shivering crunch like someone stomping on gravel. Hartley glanced sideways to see the knife embedded in the wall next to his head.

He _th_ _ought_ it had been jammed into a crack between mortar and brick, probably not as impressive as it looked in the dark, but his adrenaline spiked regardless.

But for the moment the talking was more important than the knife, and he was very glad to see that.

"Now you listen, okay?" The man was smiling, technically. He was very close--he hadn't let go of the knife, and his face was perhaps a handspan away. Hartley could see the faint glitter of his eyes in the dual-diamond-shaped darkness above teeth and finally finished collating everything he'd seen.

"You're Axel Walker." Hartley recognized that as a not-particularly useful statement of fact as soon as the words left his mouth, but then he was a little stressed. He supposed that if you had to deal with a Trickster, an immature one was likely to be somewhat more survivable, but he was _not_ pleased to be able to personally confirm that Axel Walker hadn't either quietly died somewhere or gotten the hell out of town.

Walker grinned and stretched his neck in an odd little motion that made Hartley think of Coffee stretching up to have her neck scritched. "Clever," he said, "clever clever clever..." His free hand reached up towards Hartley's face, and Hartley caught his wrist before the man could actually touch him.

Walker bared his teeth, pressed forward just enough that Hartley realized that he couldn't hold the man back, and then let his hand drop.

"You're Cold's guy, right?" he said. The thing that looked like a smile turned one-sided, smirking. Hartley imagined that anyone else would have straightened up by now, but the man apparently had no concept of personal space. "You do his tech. I hear he keeps you around for the guns, _even_ \--" his voice dropped as if he'd discovered something horribly embarrassing-- "if you never use 'em. That true?"

"True enough." Certainly parts of it were true. Hartley found that he didn't really care to correct the inaccuracies at the moment.

Walker giggled. "Yeah. You're the _nice_ one. No body count, right?"

Hartley's mouth drew down. "I can't imagine _that's_ an attractive quality to you," he said dryly. But Walker had put his weapon aside--Hartley was certain he'd hear it if the knife was pulled back out of the wall--and he didn't think anyone else of note was around. He heard people, certainly, but he heard them going down streets that ran parallel or snoring bubbily or chattering a slow vague argument back and forth with each other. None of them were near, and none of them were _waiting_ nearby.

Talking to Axel Walker was not the way he would have chosen to spend an aftermidnight hour, but it was certainly preferable to talking to Walker and James Jesse.

He schooled his mouth back to neutral. "Are you here for my technical expertise? I can use very small words."

Walker giggled a little. "Yeah, heard you were smart. Boring, but smart."

"I hear plenty of things too," Hartley said. "Right now, I _don't_ hear that James Jesse is around, so would you like to get to the point?"

He'd expected a survivable amount of irritation and the conversation getting back on track. He hadn't expected Walker's eyes to crease at the corners and his grin to widen and the way that despite the giggle he looked for a second like he was going to cry. He slammed his free hand into the wall, fist going right by Hartley's ear and gritting into brick.

Hartley kept breathing. Didn't flinch. Looked steadily up into Walker's face and reminded himself that since the man had both hands against the wall it would take him a minute to get a weapon, and that practically speaking that was a more important consideration than the faintly-bloody metallic smell of his breath and how uncomfortably close he was standing.

"I can't find your boss fast enough," Walker said through his teeth. "I need to talk to him. You gonna make that happen, Pipe-squeak, or you wanna keep mouthing off?"

Hartley felt the words _this is not how you ask for an introduction_ bubble towards his lips and swallowed them back. He nodded instead.

"I can make a call."


	2. Chapter 2

It's going to go right.

It's going to go right because if it doesn't he'll need to figure out what else to do and he isn't great at planning at the best of times, and right now with his last sight of Jesse being his dad looking furious at him and not being _able_ to even try to go find him—

Right now is not the best of times.

So it's going to go right, and Axel just ignores that seething jitter in his stomach and paces back and forth kicking trash across the ground under the flickery halogen and mostly not thinking about who the hell decides to meet in a junkyard although okay he's not exactly dressed to walk into a bar and how many empty car trunks there are around and who could end up fitting in them if they're not careful and _it's going to go right_.

( _Piper's_ soft, yeah. Piper is the kind of guy Axel's not scared of. Cold's smug about mostly not killing civilians, but Axel has heard about the Santini casino and the stuff before that. And the guy cuts no slack—he murdered his own _dad_ on a job.)

Piper also doesn't really stay quiet while they're waiting, asking questions about the Dark guy and Axel's answering without really paying attention (but he leaves Jesse out of it, because he doesn't want anyone to get the idea that his dad might be part of the problem). Piper keeps doing something on his phone, too, so Axel figures he's not really paying attention either.

But he holds the screen out to Axel, and it's got maybe a dozen or more faces on the screen, little thumbnail tiles, all white-blonde white guys. Axel blinks and looks at him. "You've got a type?"

"Which of these looks most like him?"

Axel shrugs and looks, and the thumbnails blow up and the faces scroll across the screen, and then he sees the one he recognizes and for a second he loses the calm, feels like he's shotgunned three or four energy drinks on an empty stomach and breathes in hard just to be sure he still can and his sight goes fuzzy-bright for a second.

There must have been a look on his face, because Piper's already taking his phone back and examining it. "That will do, thank you." He looks away from Axel and studies the screen, and his mouth thins.

"You know him?"

"Certainly not personally," Piper says dryly, and goes back to poking at his phone like Axel's not even there. Axel glares at him and keeps waiting.

* * *

Leonard Snart isn't as tall as Axel kind of thought he'd be, but he makes Axel's skin creep the way some of the guards did; the ones who didn't stop to remind you of anything, just cracked you one across the face if they thought you were doing it wrong. Doing _anything_ wrong. The woman with him looks like she could be pure high-rent decoration but has eyes as blue and dangerous as quarry water and smoke, and Axel figures that this is Cold's sister. Even if it's not, he doesn't think he can go too far wrong treating her like she is, so he keeps his mouth shut.

He's a little surprised the geek gets to stay, but he guesses that anyone who helped build the toys they have could get treated pretty well.

Cold looks at Piper for maybe half a second and then puts his attention on Axel. "Five minutes." Axel's heard enough to take that as an actual hard limit so he opens his mouth and starts talking.

"There's this guy who's looking to kill everyone in Central and I hear you like the place and might want to stop him before he pulls it off," Axel says. He think his voice is smooth, it sounds pretty smooth, but it's a bit far away.

"I look like a charity?"

"You look like the guy who's supposed to have the best handle on what happens here."

"Take it to the police."

Axel shakes his head. "The guy's a freak. Cops don't do really well against freaks."

"They have the Flash for that."

"Not right now, though, right?" Axel grins a little. "He's fucked off to whoever knows where."

"Like the Trickster?" Cold says, and Axel's mouth twitches, but he keeps his fists _down by his side_ he is _not_ gonna start something right now and he bites back everything he really wants to say.

"He's not gone," he says instead. "He's, he's just lying low. Keeping quiet."

"James Jesse keeping quiet," Cold says like Axel's trying a really stupid con. "He's known for that."

"I can help you stop the guy who's looking to wipe out Central," Axel says. He wants this to work, but he suddenly doesn't think it's going to. Cold looks too indifferent, his sister too softly amused. The geek's still patting gently at his phone like a distracted cat.

"What'd _that_ cost me?"

"Nothing." The indifference on Cold's face starts deepening to irritation. "I mean not anything. You promise not to do anything to James Jesse. To not hurt him."

Cold's sister looks at him like she's a little interested, but not in any way he really wants her to be.

"Why the interest in Jesse?" Cold says thoughtfully after a minute. "Worked with him once, and he left you in Iron Heights to rot."

Axel's fists squeeze so tight he can feel the seams of his gloves starting to bunch up and cut off circulation but he puts on a smile. "He's my dad, I watch out for him."

Piper looks up at _that_. Cold tilts his head to one side, like he'll see something different if he looks at Axel from a different angle. "Really."

Axel shrugs, and it makes him feel a little better. He can feel his coat shifting over his shoulders, the cold weight of metal and leather, and he imagines Jesse's arm around him. "If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'."

_Always._

Cold doesn't take the line—none of them take the line, although Piper seems to be done looking at his phone and is staring across the street like there's something above eye level that'll give him something useful to say—but he at least recognizes it for one. Doesn't give more than the flick of an eyebrow, though. Axel understands why he didn't buy in with Jesse at Christmas; there's no _way_ he could have kept up with him, could've never been more than a straight man, and just couldn't handle that.

That's okay. Better that he backed off than that he slowed Jesse down.

"Wipe out Central," Cold says, bringing the conversation back to earlier. "Talk."

"This Dark guy," Axel says carefully. "He's a freak." Piper and Cold's sister look at each other and then Piper's eyes flick back down to his phone. "He does this— Moves things without touching them. Moves himself place to place. Makes it so you can't breathe, stops bullets by waving his hand."

"Who told you that?"

"I saw it." He is not scared, even if things are looking a little distant and a little too-bright. "He did it to me, couldn't breathe 'til—" He catches himself before he says _'til Jesse told him to stop_ because his dad _did_ , there's still something there that cares, but he's pitching the Dark guy as a problem so he wants to keep Jesse's name out of it for right now. He's grinning, can't help it, but his voice is steady. "I tried to shoot him, and he froze the bullets. I saw them stuck in the air and I got the hell outta there. But he said he'd kill everyone like he did me, months from now. _Everyone_." He unclenches one fist and waves his hand at the streets around them. "Just shut them down like nothing."

"Sure you believe it," Cold says, and Axel _hates_ it when people start a sentence like that, because he knows exactly where they're going, "but a Trickster talking about someone pulling Jedi tricks? Not enough there." He doesn't turn his back, but he looks like he's getting ready to go, going to give Axel one last shot to say something while the clock ticks down and Axel's just trying to figure out _what_ —

"I believe some of it," Piper says. Axel glares at the interruption like _your belief and a buck will get me bad coffee_ , but Cold takes it for a little more, gives Piper an interested look.

"Really."

"I believe he saw the man he says he saw." Axel watches Piper straighten up a little and a very faint colour rise to his face as he explains and awh, how cute, the geek's got a _crush_. "Since I have it on excellent authority that the man he says he saw is actually dead, I expect there's some kind of impersonation going on here. But since the man in question _can_ do some of the things Mr Walker here has described, although that's not a matter of public record, I'm... curious."

"The man who's supposedly not dead is?"

Piper smiles like being asked just makes his whole night and holds his phone towards Cold.

"Damien Darhk."

There's a pause. Axel is trying very hard to place the name and coming up with an utter blank, although it sounds like someone who desperately wants to play bass guitar and wear a lot of eyeliner.

The Snarts are looking a little more thoughtful.

"Lenny," Cold's sister says with a soft pout that makes Axel feel like he should offer her his coat or buy her a drink or something even if none of that's useful, "I've _just_ gotten my place the way I like it. A girl needs a _pied-a-terre_ , you know."

"And a long-haired handyman to help you set the place up?" The look she gives Piper when he says that is basically the scary version of kicking someone under the table, and Piper lifts both his hands and ducks his head a little. "I'm not saying the threat is _plausible_ ," he goes on. "But I imagine someone might be trying something, and trading on parts of Darhk's reputation to somehow to help pull it off."

"Dying does a real number on your reputation."

Piper shrugs. "There have been cases of a reported death in Star City not quite taking. It leaves a little room to play on his name."

Cold looks thoughtful. "'Excellent authority'?" He sounds like he's echoing something said earlier that Axel missed, so it was probably something the geek said.

"I'd consider it the second-most reliable report I can imagine getting out of Star City," Piper says that like it matters, except as far as Cold is concerned it apparently does. "Additionally, if they were mistaken and he _wasn't_ dead, I cannot imagine him leaving Star City without settling matters." He shrugs and puts his phone away. "It wouldn't take much to look into it, and there's probably some value to knowing what a malevolent telekinetic might actually be interested in."

Cold and his sister look at each other, and Axel can't read it but he can at least tell they know what each other are thinking.

"Could be useful," Cold allows, and that's as far as it goes, but he looks expectantly at Axel.

"I can be useful," Axel says bluntly, hopefully. Help with finding Dark, help with _anything_ , just... "Just, like I said. Promise you leave James Jesse alone."

Cold looks amused. "Should we pinky-swear?"

Axel shakes his head. Everyone knows that if Leonard Snart agrees to something, he's good for it. He's maybe gotten a little weird with the name Cold and the parka and all that shit, but he's still good for it.

"Jesse doesn't come after me and mine, I'm sure we can keep it cool." And Axel smiles a little, feels some of the knots come out from around his lungs, breathes deep again and hears himself laughing a little.

"Okay," he says. "Okay, cool. Deal."

"So," Cold says, putting his hands together and starting to pace. "Darhk. What _did_ you notice, before you tried to shoot him?"

Axel hesitates. He wasn't trying to hide anything long term, he just hadn't exactly _planned_ how to get this out, thought he'd wing it and just needs a second to sort it out—

"He's _probably_ got a few people with him," Piper says, yappy little teacher's pet but Axel figures it's easier to let him talk and then correct him when he screws up. "Whoever's passing for Darhk tried to kill Walker. That means he wasn't particularly welcome, and—" he actually _looks_ at Axel, what a novelty— "I rather doubt that anyone invested in keeping things quiet for a few months would be inclined to start sharing it with anyone who has your reputation, if you weren't welcome." Axel smiles at him, much more politely than he actually _wants_ to. "So, presuming the discussion of the plan wasn't staged, he would have been explaining it to—"

Piper stops talking and his eyes go wide behind his glasses. Cold's sister raises an eyebrow and looks amused and concerned all at once, mostly amused.

"Hart?" she says. Or maybe it's _heart_ , Axel can't tell. He giggles again and runs one hand through his hair, looks at Cold. He _maybe_ kinda wishes that Piper had gotten something wrong.

"About that," he says, and he can feel the grin on his face, all jitter and nerves and _hah, aren't we all laughing together_. "Yeah, Dark. He— he did something to Jesse, messed him up and made him quiet, and Jesse's... he doesn't want to get away, he's kinda _working_ with him now—" He sees the look in Cold's eyes and doesn't back away, really fucking wants to but doesn't.

"You're going up against _Jesse_?"

"I'm  _helping_ him." Axel wants to make that clearer but he can't, it's all about Jesse not being  _okay_ , Jesse being twisted all wrong, and going on about that that out loud is too much like saying his dad's weak and it all locks up in his throat and it's like he can't breathe again and so he just shoves it all away and barrels on to what Cold would give a shit about. "You promised you wouldn't hurt him." Cold's reliable. He _has_ to be, and he has to care—for himself or his sister or for Piper's curiousity—because Axel doesn't know where else to go, there's no-one else he can think of who'd for-sure leave Jesse alone and actually knows how to deal with freaks. "That was the _deal_."

There's a moment of quiet that is probably not nearly as long as it feels.

"That was the deal," Cold says, and Axel grins. _Yes_.

(Piper says something that sounds rude as fuck in not-English, but Axel's too busy holding back a laugh to really notice.)

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Shakespeare's _The Tempest_ \- "misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows."
> 
> I remain quietly, perpetually convinced that if Piper keeps his head down a little and isn't that interested in robbing people, the natural conclusion is going to be that he's responsible for Len, Mick, and Lisa's guns. After all, he showed up at _about_ the right time, he talks like a brain, and Snart'd hang on to a good tech if he found him, right?
> 
> (And everyone would go along with this, because it keeps people for looking for _other_ explanations of where the tech comes from, and no-one wants STAR Labs security to be the only thing between the criminal underworld and Weird Things With Triggers.)


End file.
